Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge is a remake of NG3 that is probably the most complete apology for the sorry state of the original game that all of gaming has ever seen. The original NG3 was probably the worst idea ever conceived: A Ninja Gaiden game where you're supposed to feel bad about all the people you killed, really feel the weight of all the murder Ryu does... Just as a reminder, the entire first level of Ninja Gaiden 1 had you kill probably two or three dozen highly trained ninjas just so you could go chat briefly with the roid rage guy.
3RE turns away from that and embraces the Ninja Gaiden franchise combat pretty heavily. It's still a remake of a bad game, so the main game is still loaded with QTEs, slow walking segments, some of the worst bosses in a franchise already packed with terrible bosses (I can't understate how terrible some of these are. The spider tanks, the t-rex, the gunship, the old man in a mech, these are ATROCIOUS and the grand finale is some awful God of War QTE-fest.), enemies with unjustifiable amounts of health, and the usual sort of weaknesses and strengths you expect from Ninja Gaiden. The ONE good thing the game adds is that typically the bow will auto-lock on to the one jerk sniping you with rockets in the middle of a fight and usually but not always that guy will die in one hit. In addition, essence is gone, items are gone, and you are scored based on your combos and other combat feats and that score doubles as your currency for upgrades and costume unlocks. Chain enough kills in a short period of time and you are given a fully charged UT for free with an ever increasing score multiplier for each kill you make, which is cashed in if you use the UT or lost if you cannot keep the chain going, which gives the game a score mechanic almost worth paying attention to. The one new addition to the gameplay is called "Steel on Bone" which allows you to perform an instant kill on an enemy who has prepared a very powerful red glowing attack.... at least theoretically. This system rarely works correctly and competes with the OTs from NG2 also on the same button which do the same thing only to delimbed foes. Ryu seldom wants to do either and often would rather attack some random bug in another direction than perform the OT/SoB you are directing him to do. In addition, each enemy has his own SoB trigger attack and the windows for when you can land the SoB is INCREDIBLY inconsistent across enemy types. For a risk vs reward style move, it feels far more like a roulette spin than any actual exercise in skill.
Practically speaking the campaign is probably the worst part, it refuses to provide you any sort of enemy variety and when it does the best it can do is fat things that have infinite hyper armor and the usual sort of 2 frame startup grabs with hitboxes as generous as the average Dark Souls enemy. The plot has Ryu going up against a gang of British alchemists which, in the hands of anyone who isn't as stupid as the guys making this game, would have been the perfect impetus for bunch of gloriously stupid east vs west hammy violence, but, again, since this is baked off of NG3, this RIDICULOUS premise is all meant to be taken seriously. You're really going to want to clear the campaign to unlock Momiji, Ayane, Kasumi, and all Ryu's weapons for Ninja Trials and just play that, where the game is packed with a "best of" collection of all the previous enemies and bosses in the series. You CAN rerun the campaign missions as the various girls with "Chapter Challenge" which mercifully cuts out most of the story segments and the atrocious final boss and, in that measure, 3RE is really the first game in the NG series that is really trying for the later DMC style of letting you pick and choose the game as a buffet of combat challenges rather than forcing you to run the thing linearly as the original did.
There is really no question that, despite having its heart in the right place, 3RE is the weakest of the NG games on offer in the Master Collection. But even being a weak Ninja Gaiden game puts it in the top ten percentile of games you ever will play. Nobody makes games like this, even though they should. And this one has the benefit of having one of the best focused mission play modes in the series. In that measure it is an easy game to pick up and play and have some fun with once you've cleared the story (Or perhaps if you're smarter than me just cheated and downloaded a clear save.).
